Today, the Network for Affirmation of NGO Sector (MANS) amended criminal charges for devastation of the Tara River, which was filed with the Special State Prosecutor against those responsible in the Ministries of Transport and Sustainable Development and Tourism, environmental and water inspection, members of the commission for supervision of works on the highway and the Chinese company CRBC.
As a supplement to the criminal charges, new footage concerning the landfill in the Tara River and the discharge of wastewater into the river were submitted to the State Prosecutor’s Office.
In cooperation with six environmental NGOs, MANS filed criminal charges in late October due to a reasonable suspicion of abuse of office, negligent exercise of official duty of control, as well as environmental pollution, which ultimately resulted in devastation of the Tara River, which can be seen on the first footage published by MANS on October 23.
The footage showed that the Tara riverbed on a section slightly longer than 5km, in the part between Mateševo and Jabuka is unrecognizable and destroyed, with relocated riverbed, changed structure of the bottom and the coast, with ruined biodiversity and landscape.
New footage of November 6 show that hundreds of cubic meters of waste material from nearby sites were deposited on both banks of Tara, while on the site next to the camp Jabuka, a whole mountain of land and gravel were formed. And this was done contrary to regulations. The Ministry of Sustainable Development enabled the Chinese company CRBC to avoid the opening of two previously envisaged landfills and deposit large quantities of excavated material on the highway route into the very riverbed and on the banks of the Tara River.
In the footage taken by MANS on November 8, it can be seen that CRBC discharges wastewater directly into the stream and thus untreated into the Tara River. The fact that the competent state institutions knew that Tara was being contaminated with wastewater from the construction sites is confirmed by the official findings of the Institute for Public Health and the Institute of Hydrometeorology and Seismology. During this and last year, water quality testing in this part of the construction site of the highway showed that the water sample was defective in 26 cases .
We remind that almost a month has passed since filing criminal charges, and the State Prosecutor’s Office remains silent. We urge the State Prosecutor’s Office to announce what has been done so far in relation to the criminal charges, because the works on the highway continue and, consequently, the devastation of the Tara River.
This new evidence provided by MANS suggests that the state authorities had information a year ago that the coast and the Tara riverbed were devastated and that the Chinese company discharges wastewater into Tara. This was confirmed by the Minister of Sustainable Development, Pavle Radulović when, confronted with the footage made by MANS, he nevertheless admitted that there is a “certain” problem at the construction sites near the Tara River.
MANS expects that the competent authorities, primarily the State Prosecutor’s Office, will determine the responsibility for devastation of the Tara River in order to begin remediation of the current situation as soon as possible, and prevent further devastation in this and other locations on which the highway is being built.
Dejan Milovac
Director of the Investigative Centre
MANS
